Yokoi Kinkoku, Lakeside
village in the mountains, a hanging scroll
painting

JapanEdo period, after AD
1809

'Ink
mania'

Yokoi Kinkoku (1761-1832) was a painter-priest
of the Jodō (Pure Land) sect of Buddhism. He was a true
bunjin
or 'scholar-painter', skilled in martial arts,
calligraphy and poetry, as well as painting. He was also a
yamabushii, a member of
the mountain-climbing Shugendō sect and spent much of his time on
pilgrimages in the
mountains.

As a painter
Kinkoku may have been a pupil of Yosa Buson (1716-1784) or at least
have studied his paintings, as their works show many similarities.
However, where Buson might simply suggest the textures of rocks and
trees, Kinkoku uses an endless variety of different shapes of
brush-stroke to show every leaf and rock cranny. In fact Kinkoku
uses a seal that reads Bokuchi, meaning 'ink
mania'.

Surrounded
by looming mountain crags, a village of stilt houses nestles around
the edge of a mountain lake. A traveller in the foreground follows
a path that crosses a simple wooden bridge, then snakes along a
narrow rock ledge above the lake and disappears off through a pass
in the mountains to distant huts. The only other figures in this
grand composition are a boatman and a solitary scholar seated
contemplating the landscape from the window of one of the huts. The
rich texture of the rocks and dense summer foliage has been
achieved with a combination of saturated colour washes and lively
outlines and dotting in black ink. The white of the paper is used
to create a sense of space betweeh each rock
formation.